Every once in a while, I start getting this little money obsession. I usually work it out by chatting with my friend Marilyn because we often talk about our personal finances together. I love reading articles on MSN.com in the Money section and I even have a couple favorite authors! My favorite is M.P. Dunleavy. She's young and in touch with the challenges facing the 20-30 somethings out there.
I was cleaning off my bookshelf of old magazines and found a Money magazine from 2002 that had one the cover "The Great American Wealth Test". Marilyn and I took the test and turns out that we're both ahead of the median stats for our age groups and income levels. So that was the good news! We also confirmed what we already knew: We are both good at saving and good at planning, but not so hot at investing. Other than our 401(k) accounts (and my Roth IRA), we don't have any investing accounts. We both have money sitting at ING earning 3.8%, but isn't the 5-15% we could be earning if we had our money invested in mutual funds or something else. More risk, but potentially more return. By the way, if anyone needs an ING account, email me and I'll send a referral to you so you get $25 when you start an account with $250 or more. I'd recommend putting in the minimum of $250 and then you can add more as a separate deposit so you can take advantage of their winter special of 4.75% on any amount added now til April 15th.
This brings us to my order from Amazon this week. I ordered a book called The Coffeehouse Investor which is supposed to discuss diversification and allocation. I hope it will help me with my 401K and with investing that will be coming up soon!
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